Are you an Inny or an Outhouse?

I’ve been trying to get a handle on the Trump, shithole countries, comments. First, I wanted to find the original reporting of this to see who reported it, what did Trump actually say, under what circumstances, what was their evidence, how did they vet it, etc. In other words, what really happened? Not just what got hyped around and spit up by the Greek Chorus of Commenters. As far as I can tell, the Washington Post was the first news source reporting it. The Post claimed as their sources two persons from the White House. Or was it Verona? Nope. The White House.

Of course, news organizations need to protect their sources. Those who fail to do so stop getting tips. But the discriminating reader has to evaluate what he hears, as well. An anonymous source is just that. Anonymous. And as such, only as trustworthy as the institution publishing it. I’d feel more comfortable if this came from Glen Greenwald or Robert Parry.

WaPo has certainly been criticized as being a propaganda arm of the unelected money elite in Washington, the so-called Deep State. They are likely to have a bias toward whoever is paying the bills. They know what side of the bread gets the butter and in which direction the story is expected to spin. That’s nothing new nor is it limited to the west. Everyone does it, all creatures great and small.

They pretend to tell us the truth and we pretend to believe it.

Does this mean that Trump did not say that? Of course not. It sounds like something he would say. Frequently. And it is supported by a great composting fertilizer hole of tweets, interviews, unchecked streams of crassness, and the inadvisable smugness he regularly flushes out to his adoring water closeters hanging on his every turd. Still. It’s an unsupported allegation from unnamed sources. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. Trump does plenty of stupid things that are undeniable to waste our time grasping at straws.

But more importantly. Have any of us ever said the same thing about some other country? Have you? Was it in the presence of people you would have preferred to keep it under their hats? Be honest, now. I have to admit that I have, though I did it right out in the open. It was supposed to be ironic: Some of those shithole countries are that way because we made them so. See USMC General Smedley Butler. By his estimation, every shithole war he fought over his 38 year career had nothing to do with protecting Americans or the American mainland. They were all muscle to slap some shithole countries into submission to international corporations like United Fruit or mining concerns ready to gut the countryside. We get the bananas. We get the copper. They keep the shit. Any questions?

And speaking of countries it’s OK for us to insult, if you check what names politicians have called Russia over the past few years, you will find shithole, gas station masquerading as a country, her leader compared to Hitler, naming a street in front of the DC Russian embassy after the Russian dissident Boris Nemtsov, (maybe they should rename the street in Moscow in front of our embassy after Benedict Arnold?) the usual assortment of petty school yard bully names like psychopath, thug, authoritarian, autocrat. The last one Putin does not deny, by the way. So we should stop calling him that if we’re trying to annoy him.

But that’s OK. Those are the people it is alright for us to be bigoted against. Russians. Trump supporters. Blue collar workers. Anonymous banjo players in southern forests. Toothless grammar slayers. Anyone who disagrees with us. They’re our Niggers. Our Jews. Our Kurds, Yeminis, Palestinians, and Gypsies. Those who refuse to let us dictate to them what they can and can’t say and what they can and can’t think. So we put labels on them so we can feel justified dehumanizing them.

Our very own untermenchen. Deplorables. Sexists. Misogynists. Racists. Rocket man. Megalomaniac. Narcissist. Surely it’s OK to hate those people. They’re not like us. They’re bad people who do bad things. Why, they can’t even discuss their inadequacies with us fairly and honestly. Obviously, if they did they would immediately adopt our superior ways and get out of their shitholes. But they don’t. They insist on being racist, misogynist, Putin lovers who only support Trump because he is racist, misogynist, and has a thing for Putin. It’s obvious.

We know because we are the good people who do the good things. If only they would just go away or disappear into some shithole. There’s no way we can look at them as human beings that we might be able to speak to and negotiate with. So, whatever we do to them, it's OK. We’re fighting fascism! So we must be the good guys. Even while we dig the foundations of the next camps. Let’s all have a good old Bavarian gas barn raising and fascist fry.

We’re spending not nearly enough time hating them.